Audrey Niffenegger is the brilliant author of the best selling book The Time Travelers Wife. Her latest book is the illustrated novel The Three Incestuous Sisters. The books artwork is by Niffenegger and the story is the tale of three very different sisters: one who is beautiful, one who is smart, and one who is talented. A melodrama of sibling rivalry unfurls as one sister is driven mad with jealousy due to the passionate love affair of another.

AN: The book tour was good fun. I had been to most of the places before, but Denver was new.

DRE: How was this tour different than the last one?

AN: It was a little more subdued even though there were lots of people. I think its much different to do your first book tour because you spend all your time going around going, Oh my gosh. Look at that.

DRE: What are you teaching now?

AN: This semester Im teaching a creative writing course and an etching course.

DRE: What kind of etchings?

AN: Aquatints, hard crown, soft crown, photo etching.

DRE: What do those look like?

AN: The images in The Three Incestuous Sisters are all aquatints that I created.

DRE: What made you decide to do an ambitious book like this?

AN: This is actually what I was doing before I wrote The Time Travelers Wife. I actually started The Three Incestuous Sisters in 1985 and finished in 1999. I started the novel in 1997, so theres some overlap.

DRE: Why did it take so long?

AN: For one thing, its time consuming to make the images. Just making one of those plates can take as long as a week. The other thing was I have a tendency to get distracted and run off and do other stuff.

DRE: Like write a whole new book.

AN: Yeah, exactly. During the period when I was making The Sisters, I put out a number of smaller books and printed them myself and had some solo art exhibitions.

DRE: I think I saw that book on Amazon. Jakob something I dont know how to say it.

AN: Wywialowski. I can hardly say it.

DRE: Its even tougher than Niffenegger

AN: Yeah it is. I got it out of a phonebook.

DRE: How do you make one of these plates?

AN: What I do is take a metal plate, cover the surface with a wax ground and draw through it with a needle. You then put it in an acid bath and wherever the metals exposed, the acid will bite the image. When youre trying to put tonality into it, youre working with a rosin ground and the acid will bite around each little bite of rosin and thats how you get the tone. But youre working in reverse and working blind because you cant see the tone while youre making it. Its always very pleasurable when you pull the first print and you suddenly see what it looks like.

DRE: Its wild to open up The Three Incestuous Sisters and see that its dedicated to your two sisters.

AN: My sisters are not nearly as badly behaved as the sisters in my book.

DRE: Is the book in any way autobiographical then?

AN: No.

DRE: What did inspire the story?

AN: Back in 1985, I had this dream about these three women with really long hair sitting in a room not speaking to each other. In the dream, I knew that they were these three incestuous sisters and I woke up and I was like, Whoa. That was weird. I made a sketch of it and wrote a few notes and started to think about who they might be and what might happen to them. Then before you know it, I was working on it.

DRE: Do you see this book as a graphic novel?

AN: Its not exactly comics because it doesnt use the normal conventions of comics. Im not trying to be snotty and dissociate myself from them because I adore comics. I didnt want people to get confused about what it might be, but they are anyway.

DRE: Its not sequential art according to Scott McClouds book [Understanding Comics].

AN: No, it doesnt exactly follow his rules, which is one of the reasons I dont think it is comics. Its more related to something like one of those Max Ernsts collage novels. Something like the Hundred Headless Woman or something like that is more of an ancestor to this than say Little Nemo.

DRE: Did doing this inspire The Time Travelers Wife at all?

AN: Yeah. I would say that the characters Clothilde, the red-haired sister, and the Saint are somehow related to Clare and Henry mainly in terms of physical appearance.

DRE: Also math is used in both books.

What came first the story or the art?

AN: First I sat down and wrote a synopsis, which read kind of like a synopsis of an opera. The thing is basically a melodrama and a silent film. The captions are almost like words in a silent film. I had this page and a half long synopsis of what the story would be and then I started to break that down into individual images, sort of like storyboarding a film and then worked from that storyboard into individual images.

DRE: When someone has a successful piece like you did with The Time Travelers Wife sometimes theyre able to do something a little bit more experimental.

AN: Yes but I was already doing the experimental thing and decided to do something more palatable to the outside world.

DRE: You couldnt have expected at any point that a great publisher like Harry Abrams wouldve picked this book up. What were you thinking was going to happen with this book?

AN: Originally I made ten copies of the original edition and sold them through my gallery.

DRE: Are those what you sold for $10,000 apiece?

AN: Yeah. I tried to get it published, but publishers quite sensibly declined. When Time Travelers Wife came out, I was contacted by an editor at Abrams, who asked if I wanted to do a childrens book. Even though I have nothing against childrens books, Ive never yet made anything that was appropriate for children. So, I said, Well, maybe. But in the meantime, do you want to take a look at this? Since Abrams does much more than childrens books, she decided to do it.

DRE: Why do they always try to push childrens books on authors that dont make them?

AN: I dont know. Maybe theyre lucrative or something.

DRE: Of course they are. But it seems theyre always trying to shove childrens books on every kind of author.

AN: I would love to do one if only I could think of an idea that didnt involve sex. Someday I might manage it, but most of my ideas are dark and even though some of the best childrens literature is pretty dark, so far I havent managed to do anything for kids.

DRE: Has anyone brought up the idea of making prints of the images in The Three Incestuous Sisters?

AN: Ive heard little noises about the idea of posters or something, but hopefully nobody will try to make it into mouse pads or coffee cups or stuff like that. I would find that a little disturbing.

DRE: I just dont think that would happen.

AN: You never know though. You guy to any museum bookstore and theyre doing ToulouseLautrec at the moment.

DRE: ToulouseLautrec is big with the mousepad crowd.

Have you shown the book to any of your art students as examples?

AN: Sure, Ive been showing it to students for a long time. Usually I crack it out when Im teaching a class called Editions, which is about how to start with an idea and end up with a pile of books.

DRE: The Three Incestuous Sisters is elaborate but the price is only $30, was keeping the price down important to you?

AN: Yeah. Its funny, for somebody who makes huge, elaborate, expensive things; Im really into the democracy of mass production. I was so happy when they figured out that they could do it inexpensively and it wasnt going to be this chic coffee table book that only a few people would buy.

The other thing is that Abrams is trying to get the bookstores to shelve it with fiction instead of sticking it in the art book ghetto. That was exciting to me. Its like, Okay. Lets really attempt to get this thing out there and let it be with other imaginary stories and not stick it in there with Batman and all that.

DRE: Not that you have anything against Batman of course.

AN: No, I love Batman. He looks good in his tights. He looks good with his little bat ears, but this isnt quite that. Its something a little different.

DRE: Did you do actual book readings of it with a slideshow?

AN: Yeah, Ive been running around with my little slideshow. Its very cute. At Book Soup in LA I couldnt show slides so we all got copies of the book and we paged through them together and had story hour. It was pretty funny. Occasionally when Im in a store that cant deal with the slide thing, I just talk to people about it.

DRE: Whats going on with The Time Travelers Wife movie?

AN: I think at the moment Gus [Van Sant] has finished the script and now it is with all the people at New Line and Brad Pitt. I think once they all hammer out the changes to the script they will start to think about casting and shooting. At the moment theres this kind of a lull while everybody ponders the script.

DRE: Ponder could be the right word. Gus last few films have been ponderous. Have you seen them?

AN: I havent. But that is on my list of things to do as soon as this semester lets me out from under its grip. As far as I can tell, theyre kind of meditative. I feel very hopeful about Gus Van Sant because he knows how to make intelligent movies so I hope that that will happen with this.

DRE: Have you read the screenplay?

AN: No.

DRE: Do you want to?

AN: I do, but nobody will show it to me until its perfect. I think theyre worried Ill freak out or something.

DRE: Did you speak to Gus while he was writing?

AN: No. I think while he just wanted to write it which is fine with me. Anything he needs to know should be in the book. Though I got to meet him recently when I was out on the west coast and it was just really nice. He seems like a very smart person who will make something worth watching.

DRE: What else are you up to?

AN: Besides teaching Im trying to write another novel but it is going kind of slow because Im doing all these other things. Its set in London so it has been fun going over there to do my research. One of my characters is a tour guide for Highgate cemetery, so Ive actually become a tour guide. Then when Im there, I give tours.

DRE: Thats so funny.

AN: Its amazing. This cemetery is such a cool place and people come from all over the world to see it. Youre not allowed to roam around the older half of it because its delicate. So I give tours and people traipse around in these little groups and I tell them about it.

DRE: For your next book, what publisher are you going to be working with?

AN: Thats kind of up for grabs. MacAdam/Cage was awfully wonderful. Ive kind of learned my lesson from watching all these bands that sign with some little label and then they go sign with Sony or something and then theyre sorry. Whats great is that I have a lot of choices, but well see what actually happens. Well see who even likes the next novel. They might read it and go, Ugh.

Someone had left a copy of it at the community centre where I work and nver came back for it, so I picked it up, intrigued by the title. It was amazing, and I was wondering if she'd have another one out there somewhere. After reading it I lent the book to a passing acquaintance, so book karma continues!